Milestone 4: Shading

Discussion date: May 3. Please note that all submission material is due the morning before at 8am.

General Description

In this milestone, you will shade all objects and characters you will use in your animated sequence. Please note that after this milestone, I will strictly not allow any more objects to be produced.

As for all parts of the project, you should keep in mind that objects' shading is intended to support storytelling. Rather than focusing on producing beautifully shaded individual objects, you should take the time to think about how shading can help define the overall mood of the story. You should pay particular attention to the color palette and overall feel (cartoony, realistic, etc.) and how to make sure that the look is overall consistent (for example it would be weird to have all but one object textured). Also consider overall story readability; for example characters should be clearly visible in the background, which in turn should not be too cluttered since that might obscure motion and acting. When shading characters, remember that facial features and expressions should read well, so you may need to use shading to help highlight that too.

From a technical point of view, you are welcome to use any technique you feel confortable with. Since shading often requires solutions that are significantly different depending on which objects you are working on, please ask me for advice on how to achieve different effects (and which ones are possible) for your particular piece.

Please note that I will not judge how much work you did, but how effective it is. For example, you do not necessarily have to texture map all your objects unless you feel that is necessary for the story. On the other hand, I do realize and will take into account that certain shading styles are significantly harder to achieve than others. But overall our usual rule works: better to do less with high quality than to do more with low quality.

Submission Material

Place the following content under your group UNIX account in /net/da/cs42/[groupName]/milestones/04-shading.

• [required] Powerpoint file contaning FINAL RENDERINGS of ALL your objects, possibly from different camera views and lighting if you expect to do so in your story. Obviously you should focus on the most important objects, i.e. characters or main props/environments. Please render each object on the background it will be used against (not on a black background). This is really fundamental for evaluating if shading works! You will use this to present your work; name this file "presentation.ppt".
• [required] Maya files for the shaded objects (please combine as much as possible); name this file "object##.mb".

It is the responsibility of the group presenter to have materials turned in on time. Notify the instructor in advance if someone else is running late or taking responsibility.